Icarus, Drowning
by mimblexwimble
Summary: On Sam, Icarus and why God never meant humans to fly.


unsignificantly  
off the coast  
there was

a splash quite unnoticed  
this was  
Icarus drowning

_~ William Carlos Williams, _Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

This is how Icarus drowns:

It is surreal, if nothing else. He feels like a spectator instead of an active participant. Everything is quiet and he watches the spectacle sideways, fearing the self-realizations that will come with a head-on gaze. He _knows_ what he is doing, and why, and _knows_ that this is how he will find his way home. The flight is controlled, _perfectly_, the plummet downwards deliberate. Every risk calculated, accepted.

Yes, warnings ring in his ear, oft-spoken orders (whether obeyed or not): _Not too high, not too low_. Yes, there is fear bubbling beneath his heart. He can feel the destruction of this, along with the rightness. Feels like this may, under the correct circumstances, be defined as suicide, caught between the sun and sea, both surging forward until he doesn't know which to avoid more.

In the end, he almost gives in to the inevitable collapse of the two, burning and drowning pressing together into a vortex that he cannot even think to escape.

In the end, he almost feels grateful.

**

This is how Sam Winchester drowns:

The seconds before the world ends are filled with revelation, realization. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, magnified tenfold because this sinking feeling means that Dean's going to Hell and there's nothing Sam can do about it. And with his stomach falls his hope, his heart, his soul – with it falls Dean, thrown back onto a table by something there and not-there, something Dean can see and Sam can't. And it's all wrong, because it's _Sam_ who sees things, Sam and not Dean.

Screams usher in the beginning of the end of the world. As Sam begs and pleads and feels his throat rip itself raw, his mind slowly crumbles to a dust trying to understand how this happened, trying to discern that _one_ moment out of all others in which the world finally began to fray at the edges, and Ruby became Lilith, and Dean's fate was sealed, once and for all. But Sam finds no insight, knows only that Ruby isn't Ruby anymore and this isn't a dream, and he's not going to wake up to Asia today.

And he prays for the screaming to stop, tries to look away from Dean, but can't, because this is it, this is the last time Sam's going to see Dean alive. Then suddenly, like someone's taken pity on him from above, the screaming does stop and the world finally ends for the first time.

And in the heavy silence between _scream_ and _light_ Sam starts praying for the screaming again. This time, no one listens.

**

The world is different, after, but only for Sam.

There's color everywhere but it still looks gray and cold. Sam watches it from under the covers on the bed he usually uses when he stays at Bobby's, the one closer to the window, further from the door. Bobby comes in three times a day now to offer food. He's realized that Sam simply isn't going to talk. Soon he'll realize Sam isn't going to eat either and then he won't come at all. Another one gone, Sam thinks, and he can't even bring himself to care.

The window is open a crack and a breeze seeps through. It could be warm for all he knows, but it feels like ice on his skin and he pulls the sheets closer around himself, as if that's going to help. Sam knows it's just him.

Dean's burning in Hell – Sam's freezing on Earth.

Somewhere someone is laughing and it sounds hollow and empty, like everything else. Sam wonders if the sound should make him angry.

The breeze from the slit in the window is whistling now, a high pitched shriek and Sam squeezes his pillow around his ears and the sheets around his body, and tries to curl up into the smallest possible ball. He wills it all to go away. I thought the world ended, he thinks. I thought the world ended.

Bobby comes in later with a thick blanket and gently throws it over Sam. It's the dead of summer but Sam can't stop shivering.

**

In the end (_the beginning_), he simply leaves; Bobby doesn't argue but his face carries an expression Sam doesn't have the energy to explore.

He expects to go on until the hours, days, minutes merge into an endless stream which he can use to shield himself from the world. But it never takes long for the devil to find him.

The memory of Dean's body wrapped in white sheets in the backseat calls to Sam, until he's biting through his lip to stop himself screaming, until wetness races down his cheeks and he's pressing down on the accelerator so hard he can hardly feel his leg. The freeway lights stream past, a river of yellow, the dashed lines on the black asphalt Morse code for a soulless existence.

In between _burial_ and _Bobby _and _begging_ and _Ruby_, Sam finds that he has lost the ability to tell warmth from cold, blood from water, right from wrong.

(_Darkness from light._)

Ruby brings a road to follow, and he needs to feel, God, he just wants to _feel_ and this might be the cure.

Each day brings a multitude of wrongness, a trickle of rightness, and yet, he clings to hope like a child to his blanket, like he clung to normality and then revenge and then Dean. Like doing this will fix things, like there's something worth fixing.

Sam's always latched on to the impossible, the unreachable.

(_The brave, the strong, the good, the better. Everything he is not. Everything he can never be.)_

This is no different.

**

There is never any love in it, just an attempt at finding balance; she wanting to be needed, he needing to be wanted. Ruby comes and between training and arguing, they fall, tangled limbs and darkness, and then she leaves and Sam feels as empty (_dead_) as before.

After the first night, he rifles through a box in the Impala's trunk, and pulls out Dean's amulet. He slips it over his neck and into his shirt, as if it can protect him.

(_As if it can save him from himself._)

Spiraling, Sam thinks, in the painless moments between sleeping and waking, dreams still lingering in front of his eyes.

There is no middle ground that he can find. There is only too high, or too low, and he doesn't know which is worse.

**

He remembers the last moments, not the last day, or the last glance, but the last _moments_ of Dean and his life, in the true definition of living. The laughter, ringing and bright, the quirk of lips, the glittering in his eyes. Sam remembers watching, drinking in the details, realizing that this was his brother on his deathbed: the winding road under his wheels, the thrum of music around him, the nod of his head and the natural settling of his body against the not-leather seats.

He remembers the world in Dean's eyes, one right and one wrong, everything simplistically monochromatic, diametrically opposite.

But Sam has always been able to see the shades of gray, could never live the either-or life, absolutes funny, idealistic, confusing things, to be pondered over in bed as he let dreams sweep away the aftertaste of another kill, another supernatural body shriveling at their feet. He wonders now, if these views are only an excuse for himself, an out.

A loophole in the law books.

He wonders what Dean would think of him, if he knew.

**

The root of their problems, Sam thinks, the Winchester falling, is allowing one person to become the only thing worth waking up in the mornings for, worth living for, so that when that person is finally lost for good, dead against all efforts, you lose the very landmark that is your compass.

And then, you lose yourself.

**

Sam has heard the tale in itself a number of times, but never from Icarus's point of view. Only read of his failing, his falling, his stupidity, foolishness, carelessness. But he wonders how it must have felt to be trapped in four walls that aren't home, the only possibility of escape an insane plan. He wonders how it must have felt, the first gust of free air under his wings, the pure control of flight, the knowledge that he was finally doing something to get out of the nightmare. He wonders how it must have felt, the scorching burn of wax, slipping in between his shoulder blades (_the warmth, spreading from spine to arm, the disgusting drip of blood down his throat_), the sudden loss of control, so quick that it went unnoticed until the end, both by him and Daedalus, the feeling of falling and knowing there was nothing he could do or could have done, watching the spiral downwards and thinking, _Maybe it's just better this way. At least I'm free._

He wonders about the single, sunray-bordered, moment of triumph, the endless darkness before and after.

Sam wonders.

(_Sam knows._)


End file.
